Karim Kattan's Eden at Dawn is a National Book Award

Karim Kattan's novel Eden at Dawn is a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. The longlists for the prestigious award, now almost a century old, were announced last week, placing the English translation by Jeffrey Zuckerman among this year's diverse nominees.

The novel has earned several honors in France and was a finalist for the 2024 Prix Renaudot. Kattan's first novel, Le Palais des deux collines (The Palace on the Higher Hill), previously won the 2021 Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie. Eden at Dawn was also a finalist for the Premio Gregor von Rezzori.

Translation journey and challenges

Translator Jeffrey Zuckerman handled a complex web of tonal shifts and cultural references to bring the work to English readers. The prose moves from highbrow to plainspoken and includes allusions ranging from the ancient Babylonian epic Enuma Elish to lyrics by Kate Bush. One section required identifying fragments from Orlando Furioso, tracing them to the original Italian, finding existing English translations, and weaving them seamlessly into the text.

A specific challenge was rendering the French phrase 'C’est comme ça'. After testing options like 'That’s how it is', Zuckerman settled on 'So it goes' to avoid an unintended echo of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Author Karim Kattan was actively involved, providing input on religious themes in Palestine and advising on balancing elevated language with levity. He supported allowing a 'dirty joke' to land effectively in English. Kattan noted that his English is not perfect and that he must trust the translator's judgment, calling translation a specific art form he does not practice.

Author background and literary context

Karim Kattan is a Palestinian writer from Bethlehem, born in Jerusalem and now based in France. He describes his relationship to language as fluid, with French as his mastered language but a mix of French, English, and Arabic constituting his 'true language' from his upbringing. Translating the novel back to English required re-evaluating verbs he originally thought of in English, such as 'plodding' for dinosaurs, which was preserved in the final text.

The book explores beginnings and metamorphoses. Jeffrey Zuckerman said, "It’s a love story between two men in Jerusalem... It’s much more experimental in tone-the narrator is the sky!" This sky narrator 'takes charge of the narration', making the story feel 'more airborne than earthbound'. A key symbol is a jinn that takes the form of a bulbul, a songbird that watches over the two main characters, symbolizing their connection against the backdrop of Jerusalem's khamsin sand.

Future projects and broader landscape

Karim Kattan's next novel, Septentrionale (North Star), is slated for publication in France in September 2026. Meanwhile, the National Book Award continues to highlight a wide array of voices across its categories. The Translated Literature list features works from Chinese, French, and Arabic, while the Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature categories shows a broad spectrum of authors and subjects.

Translator Jeffrey Zuckerman, a graduate of Yale University, has won the French Voices Grand Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. He has received fellowships from MacDowell and the National Endowment for the Arts and was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The experimental, sky-narrated tone of Eden at Dawn now invites English-language readers into its Jerusalem love story.